No sound in Tahrpup

[streetwitch]

I'm running PuppyTahr. When I first loaded it the speaker icon was okaybut I didn't get any sound. Now I have aspeaker with a diagonal red line. Could anyone help trouble shoot my sound card?

[mostly_lurking]

The question is whether this is a hardware compatibility problem or just a bad configuration... sometimes, Puppy just decides to disable the sound, maybe because it came upon a hardware setup it didn't expect; then you have to turn it on manually. (I've had this when porting a multisession Puppy CD from one computer to another.)

Right-click the speaker icon and choose "full window" - does it show any active audio channels? If not, open the config window, go to the "hardware" tab and add some to the "active sliders" list. Which channels are available depends on your hardware; anything with "master", "front" or "PCM" in its name is probably a good candidate. (Or just add all, it won't hurt.) If there are none listed at all, Puppy might have trouble detecting/choosing a sound card. Try the Multiple Soundcard Wizard. All of this can also be accessed through Menu > Setup > ALSA Sound Wizard.

If you still can't get it to work then, not even when you boot without your savefile/folder [*], you'll have to wait for someone who knows more about fixing sound issues than me. Or maybe try another Puppy if it turns out that Tahrpup doesn't like your hardware. (It might be useful to tell us what computer you have - its age, basic hardware information; maybe someone knows which Puppies will work best with it.)

[*] On most Puppies, this can be done by pressing the "F2" or "F3" key on the boot splash screen, then entering puppy pfix=ram at the command prompt; some Puppies have a "no savefile" option in the boot menu.

[bigpup]

What version of Tahrpup??????

[streetwitch]

tahrpup 6.0.5
and I can't find any soundcard anywhere. This is an old 686 machine that once ran win 98. I'm pretty sure it has a sound blaster.

[bigpup]

Menu > Setup > ALSA Sound Wizard >Multiple Cards

This lists no sound cards?
Nothing?

Menu >System >Pup-Sysinfo >Devices >Audio
Anything listed?

Being that old.
Just because it has a sound card does not make it 100% sure it is working.
It could be bad.

May be a driver issue.

[perdido]

tahrpup 6.0.5
and I can't find any soundcard anywhere. This is an old 686 machine that once ran win 98. I'm pretty sure it has a sound blaster.

Hmm, first try what mostly lurking and bigpup suggest.

Did the dog bark when you ran puppy the first time? It does a "woof woof" through the speaker when it first starts up when run for the first time
if the speaker / soundcard is working.

Maybe check the bios settings, see if there is enable/disable sound card?

If still no success run the command lspci from terminal and paste it here (center mouse button cut and paste from terminal)
that command will show pci devices in the computer.

.

[mostly_lurking]

Soundblaster? I tried several Puppies on Virtualbox, which can emulate a Soundblaster 16 card. (Of course, trying it in a virtual machine doesn't guarantee that it will work the same way on real hardware.)

Both Tahrpup 6.0.5 and Slacko 6.3.2 didn't have the necessary drivers (this can be fixed, see below). With some Puppies, including Precise 5.7.1 retro and Lucid 5.2.8.7, I only had to run the ALSA Wizard (that is, alsaconf in a terminal), tell it to probe the legacy ISA cards, then choose Soundblaster 16 from the list (by unchecking all others; there seem to be drivers for Soundblaster 1.0/2.0/Pro as well), then maybe run the Multiple Soundcard Wizard to select the blasted Blaster thing, and finally use the next best audio mixer to turn the volume up. With Wary 5.1.2, I had to enter modprobe snd-sb16 in a terminal because it somehow failed to load the driver after the alsa config. (Some combination of the above will probably work for other Puppies, too.)

Alsaconfig was telling me it had written its stuff to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf, so I looked into that file to see what it did:

Code: Select all

# --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
# --- ALSACONF verion 1.0.24.2 ---
alias snd-card-0 snd-sb16
alias sound-slot-0 snd-sb16
options snd-sb16 isapnp=0
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---

If the system has the needed drivers, just running modprobe snd-sb16 in a terminal might be enough to get it working for the current session; adding the above text to alsa.conf should make it permanent.

For Tahrpup, which was lacking some drivers, I had to change its kernel. (It seems this works only with frugal installs, not with live sessions; no idea about full installs.) I installed this "retro" kernel, which contains drivers for Soundblaster and some other old sound cards (it actually claims that it's a 3.4.103 kernel...). I used the instructions for installing "huge" kernels by rcrsn51.

After rebooting, I ran alsaconf in a terminal, then rebooted again, and the sound was working. As I mentioned before, you can right-click the speaker icon to open the sound configuration to add channels, adjust levels, etc.

[Peterm321]

try at the commandline:

Code: Select all

cat /proc/asound/cards

cat /proc/asound/devices

And if there are some entries then any problem arises from the way the system has configured the devices. Interestingly I am trying Puppy Tahr at this time (and making this post using Tahr) and I have found there are some differences from Raring. Notably the line-in is muted unless "Loopback mixing" is enabled in retrovol

Code: Select all

retrovol

The

Code: Select all

amixer controls

command showed different numeric IDs to the various soundcard controls. It does appear that different versions of Puppy will make some changes to the way soundcards are configured.

[Pelo]

just the same problem with unicorn this morning.. All was working well. When i start in Ram, everyting works well, dog barks arriving at desktop. But i fail to repair my pupsave. The Puppy does not seem the cause.. I think about peasy Mp3 that perhaps would have broken the system
I bookmarke this topic. Solutions found willl be efficient for me too, i think
I come back, trying to re-install as listed

On a working well session :
# cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [PCH ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH
HDA Intel PCH at 0xf7b00000 irq 49
1 [pcsp ]: PC-Speaker - pcsp
Internal PC-Speaker at port 0x61
# cat /proc/asound/devices
1: : sequencer
2: [ 1- 0]: digital audio playback
3: [ 1] : control
4: [ 0- 3]: digital audio playback
5: [ 0- 1]: digital audio playback
6: [ 0- 0]: digital audio playback
7: [ 0- 0]: digital audio capture
8: [ 0] : control
33: : timer
# amixer controls
numid=27,iface=CARD,name='HDMI/DP,pcm=3 Jack'
numid=21,iface=CARD,name='Headphone Jack'
numid=20,iface=CARD,name='Internal Mic Phantom Jack'
numid=19,iface=CARD,name='Mic Jack'
numid=23,iface=CARD,name='SPDIF Phantom Jack'
numid=22,iface=CARD,name='Speaker Phantom Jack'
numid=18,iface=MIXER,name='Master Playback Switch'
numid=17,iface=MIXER,name='Master Playback Volume'
numid=2,iface=MIXER,name='Headphone Playback Switch'
numid=1,iface=MIXER,name='Headphone Playback Volume'
numid=34,iface=MIXER,name='PCM Playback Volume'
numid=10,iface=MIXER,name='Mic Boost Volume'
numid=6,iface=MIXER,name='Mic Playback Switch'
numid=5,iface=MIXER,name='Mic Playback Volume'
numid=9,iface=MIXER,name='Capture Switch'
numid=8,iface=MIXER,name='Capture Volume'
numid=16,iface=MIXER,name='IEC958 Default PCM Playback Switch'
numid=28,iface=MIXER,name='IEC958 Playback Con Mask'
numid=12,iface=MIXER,name='IEC958 Playback Con Mask',index=16
numid=29,iface=MIXER,name='IEC958 Playback Pro Mask'
numid=13,iface=MIXER,name='IEC958 Playback Pro Mask',index=16
numid=30,iface=MIXER,name='IEC958 Playback Default'
numid=14,iface=MIXER,name='IEC958 Playback Default',index=16
numid=31,iface=MIXER,name='IEC958 Playback Switch'
numid=15,iface=MIXER,name='IEC958 Playback Switch',index=16
numid=7,iface=MIXER,name='Auto-Mute Mode'
numid=11,iface=MIXER,name='Internal Mic Boost Volume'
numid=4,iface=MIXER,name='Speaker Playback Switch'
numid=3,iface=MIXER,name='Speaker Playback Volume'
numid=25,iface=PCM,name='Capture Channel Map'
numid=24,iface=PCM,name='Playback Channel Map'
numid=26,iface=PCM,name='Playback Channel Map',device=1
numid=32,iface=PCM,name='ELD',device=3
numid=33,iface=PCM,name='Playback Channel Map',device=3
#

[Pelo]

cat /proc/asound/cards
no sounds cards !
What could have broken audio.. that is the question..